George Herrmann passed away

Our mechanics group at Stanford and I, in particular, were very saddened to learn of the passing of our friend and colleague, George Herrmann. He was a scholar, a man of refinement, and just a wonderful decent fellow. George was my second chairman in mechanics at Stanford, although I had actually first met him during my post-doc in Germany in 1967. He and I shared research, humor, dinner, and drinks on many occasions, the last two being on 12/9 and 12/11 of this past year. I felt privileged to have had the benefit of his friendship, his knowledge, and his wise counsel. I doubt I shall see a man of his kind pass this way again.

He is one of our great scholars to be remembered in our mechanics community. I once hosted him at Brown University for his invited seminar, and the seminar was a sequel of his previous one given at Brown fifteen years before when I was a graduate student. It was truly the sequel of the question on conservation laws that he posed in the previous lecture. I admire such chasing of questions long in mind; what a scholar! Write with sorrow. K.-S.

As a graduate student, I was fortunate to have an outside corner office in the Durand Building at Stanford ,where every morning Professor Herrmann (I'll always refer to him that way) would walk by and wave, then usually stop and have a brief chat. He was an extremely kind man, and always had time during his busy day to talk. He posed stimulating questions relating to my research, was very encouraging and open to pursuing new directions, often a bit off the track of the main topic, but in the long run very beneficial to a broad understanding of mechanics. He was a gentleman and a scholar in the classic sense- it was a privilege to know him.